


s’good

by orphan_account



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Crack, F/M, Fluff and Crack, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Pete's World, Post-Episode: s04e13 Journey's End, Rose plays the Doctor, Sickness, the Doctor is sick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-08-08 03:48:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7742161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor is sick (and high on meds). Rose tries to take care of him. And a look at their relationship through the eyes of an innocent stranger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	s’good

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I’ve had an idea for a drabble/sketch where Tentoo is sick and Rose takes care of him for a while, so here goes. It’s all all fluff and crack – enjoy! (There is an OC involved, but purely for the purposes of presenting the Doctor and Rose’s relationship as seen by a stranger).  
> P.S. Reviews are the jam to my Ten.

The plaque on the van’s door reads  _Rose Tyler_  and she climbs the three steps, reasoning with herself that Rose certainly wouldn’t mind if she waited inside. Certainly.

The inside is warm and pleasantly stuffed. It smells of tea.

Anya shrugs off her heavy coat and looks around curiously. Incidentally, the van lives up to her assumptions regarding how Rose Tyler’s living space would look. The walls are covered in corkboards, calendars and photos of various sorts, painted pink, and there are quite a few rather mismatched pieces of furniture crammed into this small amount of space. There’s even a tiny and strikingly old-fashioned telly sitting on top of some cupboard, and she catches a glimpse of  _Twin Peaks_  opening credits before it strikes her that she isn’t alone.

There are already two people there: one, dark-haired and bespectacled, is sitting by a minuscule table, huddled in the faint light of a lamp and filling out some paper dotted with rows of columns and digits. Every now and then, he emits a frustrated scoff or sips his gone-cold tea with distaste. She instantly recognizes Quentin Graves, Torchwood’s head physician.

The other man is occupying the slightly sagged blue couch. First thing she sees are his legs: long, lanky and propped up on the low table in front of him. He’s wearing tattered red chucks and what appears to be two jackets of the kind Rose wears, wrapped around him like a protective bubble. His hair sticks up in various directions, in a way that implies carelessness but she suspects is actually meticulously coiffed. He seems to be eating something out of a bowl.

She’s fairly sure she’s never seen him before. But then again, she reasons, it’s been years since she’s last seen Rose Tyler. Maybe she's finally over this reluctance to commit to relationships and has actually found someone. Or maybe it’s just a friend.

Quentin glances up as the floor creaks beneath her feet and gives her a sharp look, “Oh, Anya. It’s been a while. How are you? I, uh, I’m terribly sorry but apparently I have to bullshit my way through these reports or else they’ll fire me.”

His voice is dry, dispassionate, just as she rememebers. A weird mix of profanity with stiff, correct phrasing. Never been a particularly social type, that one, but amazingly still the only close friend Rose insisted to have made at Torchwood. 

A warm wave of nostalgia washes through Anya, but before she can reply, the other man gives a chuckle. “You know, I’d love to see them  _try_.”

He turns his head in her direction and she’s surprised –– his pupils are impossibly dilated and his gaze seems out of focus. “Hello, there. I’m the Doctor.” His voice, too, is slurred ever-so-lightly, as if he’s having trouble assembling words into sentences.

She waits a while for an elaboration –– the doctor of  _what_ , precisely, but there comes none.

“Anya Vincent,” she introduces herself uncomfortably and clears her throat. “Field biology. Been working here some time ago. I’m ... I’m a friend of Rose.”

“So I’ve heard,” he replies laconically, those round eyes still boring into her, amiably, if with an unnerving intensity. She’s wondering what exactly did he hear, but she doesn’t get to ask –– the door creaks open and Rose Tyler herself stumbles in, flushed and breathless.

“Blimey, it’s  _cold_  outside,” she drawls, stomping her feet on the floor. “Below zero, I’d say. Jake swears his gloves are all frozen.” She seems to consider it for a moment, “Actually, he might be making it up, he loves drama. Still, s’bloody cold. I’d never thought the States could be colder than England.”

“And where is Jake?” Quentin asks dully.  

“Oh, Ellie’s got him captured.” Rose snickers, ambling up to the kitchen counter in the corner. “Reckon she’s thrilled to have a male to do the digging. Mind you, I also think that should be some sort of volunteer-only sector. The bloody shovels! As if they didn’t have plenty of technology advanced enough to avoid that sort of thing. I think it’s just someone from the Utilities being a prick, honestly. And this spaceship or whatsit is stuck deep.”

“I would have helped,” comes a faint voice from behind Anya and she swivels around –– it’s Chucks, as she’s dubbed him, raising his chin up to catch a better view of Rose. “But I’m afraid I’m in a bit of a state,” he  gestures helplessly at himself –– indicating the jackets or the bowl of banana crisps in his lap, she isn’t sure.

“And  _I’m_  still mad at you,” Rose says tersely, giving him a very pointed look. “Don’t think I have to say whose idea it was in the first place to throw himself into the Atlantic bloody Ocean, temperature far below reasonable and swim half a mile. Just ‘cause,” she waggles a finger in his direction, “you  _thought_  you saw some funky alien seal try and attack me.” 

Anya looks at the man curiously, giving an involuntary shudder. Atlantic Ocean? Swimming? God.

He’s currently making a bit of a show of eating his crisps, clearly sheepish and no longer making eye contact with anyone. “Now, it didn’t seem such a bad idea back then,” he murmurs quietly. “And Floxinaucinapan seals  _are_  really highly carnivorous, you know.”

Rose merely rolls her eyes and makes her way to the table, a mug of steaming tea cupped in her palms. “Who gave those crisps to you, anyway? I thought you said they make you queasy when you mix them up with the meds.”

His mouth is currently full of said crisps, so the reply comes out rather muffled, “Nicked ‘em. And ––” he swallows and shrugs his shoulders, the movement slightly stymied by the many layers of his jackets. “Perhaps it wasn’t the mixture of the crisps and meds per se. Perhaps it was just the meds.”

“ _Perhaps_ , you’re being dramatic.”

He does heave a rather dramatic sigh when Rose leans over to steal a chip from his bowl. Upon tasting it, she scrunches up her nose. 

“God, this is just awful. How can you eat ‘em? No wonder they make you sick.”

He disregards her review completely.

“You know what else is awful? Being sick at all.  _Awful_  business, I’m telling you. Humans are so inefficient,” he informs her haughtily and she quirks an eyebrow.

“M’sorry to break this to you, Doctor, but you’re sort of insulting yourself right now,” she observes, amused. “You might wanna rethink your collection of handy jibes. By all means, though, carry on.”

He makes a face at her and attempts to trip her over when she’s crossing his legs –– or maybe pull her onto his lap along with the banana crisps –– Anya isn’t sure. Either way, he’s too slow and the effort seems to send him even loopier, as he falls back onto the pillows, gasping feebly.

“Ohh, the world is spinning,” he intones thickly in what seems to be a parody of someone else’s accent. “Remember that, Rose? The universe is falling around  _us_.”

What he’s saying is either very cheesy or utterly nonsensical. Possibly both. Anya gives Rose a cautious sideways glance –– she has always seemed to attract the oddest blokes. She wonders where the hell did she pick up this particular one.

Rose’s features have softened a bit. “You know that you  _need_  the meds, right? And that I don’t have a handy set of nanogenes tucked somewhere in my pockets?”

He smiles lazily. “I surely hope not. That’d imply it would be a waste to use them on me. Which is ... not very nice.”

He suddenly looks over at Anya and seems to register her confusion.

“See, I seem to have developed a bit of pneumonia,” he explains, giving her a warm –– though admittedly rather distant smile. She thinks he’s probably not even properly seeing her, but rather thinking she’s some kind of a projection of his feverish mind. “And it turned out to be a tiny,  _teensy_  bit more serious than I thought it’d be.”

By the table, Rose bites her lip, her eyebrows knitting together. Now that he’s not looking, she appears rather worried.

Chucks –– or, alternatively,  _the Doctor_ , as both Rose and himself apparently refer to him –– rambles on.

“And then they gave me this drug ... Advanced medicine and all that, supposed to cure me in a tick,” he pauses for a moment, contemplating. “ _Funny_  thing, this drug I’m on. Makes the world go kinda wonky. Sort of like temporal displacement, only slowed down and more ... continuous. And in one place. And caused by something else than prolonged exposure to the void ... Huh, fancy that. It’s actually not like temporal displacement at all.”

He looks vaguely disappointed.

“You might wanna rethink your analogies,  _too_ ,” Rose remarks, taking another sip of her tea. “‘Cause this one’s just lousy.”

“I  _know_ ,” he whines, looking up at her and shaking his head. “I don’t know what is happening to me. Rose, am I getting all settled and domestic and boring? Am I getting all that  _already_?”

“You’re getting  _old_ , more likely,” she replies flippantly. “Reckon this ninth hundred finally kicked in.” And she gives him a tongue-touched grin, to which he responds with a scowl.

“Touché, Rose Tyler,” he huffs. “You know what  _you’re_  getting? Rude.”

“Oh, y’know. Sort of always hanging out with the rude lot nowadays.” She’s still sounding cheeky and he opens his mouth to reply.

“And, uh –– what the hell is temporal displacement, again?” Anya interjects before he can form a retort, mostly because she wants to put a stop to this increasingly more intimate-sounding banter. She feels like the two of them might as well be alone in the van. She doesn’t like it.

Quentin has his back turned to them but oddly enough, he seems unperturbed. Used to it? Or maybe he just doesn’t register anything but the rows of numbers in front of him.

And also, what?  _Ninth hundred? Temporal displacement?_

“Oh, nothing much,” Rose replies in a mock matter-of-fact manner, barely looking at her, “a shift in the chronozone of a given body with instantaneous vertical leap forward or backward effect.”

She looks at Chucks. Chucks looks at her. Simultaneously, they grin at each other.

He’s  _still_  wrapped in two jackets and holding a bowl of banana crisps, of all things, in his lap, eyes blurry from meds. She’s  _still_  wearing latex gloves and her cheek is smudged with fingerprint-collecting ink. Or something else entirely, sticky and black. A spine-chilling Twin Peaks tune plays off in the distance.

Anya thinks she’s never seen anything soppier. 

...

And she’s starting to fall into a bit of the all-too-familiar ‘depressed single woman’ reverie when Quentin Graves picks himself up with a sigh and announces he’s finished. 

“At fucking last,” he adds under his breath. He certainly swears a lot for the most brilliant physician on the entire planet, Anya thinks.

He and Rose pull on their jackets, laughing about Jake’s oversensitivity and something that sounds like "Jackie's pancakes". Before Anya  knows it, she’s agreed to keep the Doctor company while they’re out working. She tries to convince herself it’s not out of sheer curiosity. She does not, after all, want to spend too much time in that goddamn blizzard outside.

“Keep an eye on him, yeah?” Rose mutters into her ear, when she bends over to pick up her scarf. “He’s really quite sick, no matter what he makes it look like. It is actually serious.”

“Sure thing,” Anya replies briskly, nestling herself more comfortably on the sofa.

“I’ll have you know, Rose Tyler, that I’m just as outstandingly vigilant now as I am ever, thank you very much,” comes a sleepy mutter from beside her. “And although I do seem to have lost some of my ... my usual startling eloquence, I did hear everything you just said.”

“Go to sleep,” Rose tells him sternly. “I’m not having you hibernate for the rest of the week. And I’m  _still_  mad. You got that?”

“Yes, sir.”

...

Anya makes them tea –– it’s comical, really, how true this particular stereotype proves to be, because the van is quite literally packed with tea of various sorts –– and plonks herself down onto the sofa next to him. 

“Ta,” he says, not without a certain lag, when she proceeds to take off her boots and tucks her legs underneath her.

“What is it with you Brits,” she ventures in response, “and the insane amounts of this idiotic beverage you’re constantly drinking? It’s honestly  _weird_.”

“I’m neither actually British nor a particularly fanatic tea enthusiast,” he replies very slowly, “but I suppose  ... tea’s  _good_. Good, um. You know what else is good? Bananas. Yeah. And  _jam_.”

“Bananas and jam,” she repeats, wincing involuntarily. “Sort of sweet, that.”

“Oh, thanks,” he replies faintly and she realizes he somehow managed to assume she was paying him a compliment. Before she can correct him, he speaks out again.

“Sorry, don’t wanna be rude –– Rose gets sort of cranky when I’m rude  _but_  –– are you intending to hit on me?” 

The question is perfectly amiable and very matter-of-fact and Anya nearly chokes on her tea.

“What?” she splutters. “God, no. Definitely not. I mean you’re not ... but, uh, why would I even ...? So, no. Sorry.”

“No, no, that’s good.  _Brilliant_.” He seems genuinely cheered by the fact. He smiles in her general direction, dimples showing. “Fancy a banana crisp, Anya Vincent?”

She accepts one and then adds, rather waspishly, feeling righteously offended by his assumption, “Besides,  _sideburns_? Please. What are you, a runaway from some sort of a freaky seventies tv show?”

He emits a sound that was probably intended to be laughter. He seems to run out of energy midway through, though, and merely exhales. “And who’s being rude now? But I suppose I sort of deserved that.”

“Yes, you did,” she confirms, “and you’re much too thin. Bony. Seriously, what––”

“You know, you can stop now,” he sniffs pointedly. “As you know, I’m sort of ill. I have privileges. One of them is demanding that people are nice to me and my ego.”

She snorts.

The banana crisps  _are_  awful but they keep eating them anyway.

...

They are quiet for a while and, too chuffed to further investigate Chucks’ backstory, she tries to catch up with the show. 

He lasts approximately two minutes before mumbling out, “You know, you remind me of this friend of mine. Donna, Donna Noble. She always told me I was too thin. And was rude. And insulted me a lot. And wore the same kind of ridiculous fur-coat-thing as you do.” 

She huffs. “You  _watch_  it, Chuck Taylor.”

“Seriously,” he frowns at her. “You’re  _so_  Donna. Star-spangled and sorta surly, true, but still.”

She shrugs. “Maybe. Don’t know her.”

“Yeah, well ... you wouldn’t. We used to be best mates, Donna and I,” he says only half-coherrently but she thinks she can pick up a wistful note in his muffled voice.

“But you’re not anymore?”

“Not really, given that she doesn’t exactly remember I ever existed. Funny, that.”

He doesn’t look amused when he stares ahead, onto the screen of the tiny telly, where Dale Cooper is currently hanging upside down from the ceiling of his hotel room. Anya feels like squirming. She has not expected such an answer and her curiosity is roused yet again.

“Seems to have ... developed a bit of amnesia, that Donna, huh?” she ventures cautiously. He looks over at her and blinks, as though trying to break out from his haze.

“You can say so, yeah,” he replies weakly.

“This sort of sucks.”

“Sort of, yeah,” he returns to watching the tv show (or pretending to watch it, she can’t be sure). “But you ... can’t have everything, can you. And I have Rose back. So ... y’know. Fair’s fair.”

She’s not sure how to respond. “Uh, I guess?”

“I’m not ––” he trails off, as if he’s having more an more trouble collecting thoughts. “She’s back.  _S’good_.”

She doesn’t ask back from  _where_. By the time she’s plucked up the courage, he’s asleep.

...

And by the time the episode draws to an end, she has finished her tea and her verbose companion is murmuring something that doesn’t remotely sound like any language she knows of. There’s a little bead of sweat trailing down his forehead and his cheeks are flushed. 

Anya considers trying to wake him up. Or perhaps calling for help?

Luckily, Rose Tyler chooses this exact moment to slip into the van, snowflakes tangled in her windswept hair. The freaking  _timing_.

“How’s the little patient?” she asks briskly, short of breath and rubbing her hands together to warm up.

Anya squints at Chucks.

“He was okay for the most part of it, then sort of ... declined. Dunno, is he supposed to be muttering incoherrently to himself like that?”

Rose frowns and bends over to examine the subject, who, by this point has stopped muttering in favour of a drawn out sigh. “I’m not sure. Probably it’s just the meds kicking in.”

For such a reassuring tone, she seems awfully concerned. After catching Anya’s shrewd gaze, she explains clumsily, “You know, he’s really hardly ever sick. This is, like, the first time since I’ve known him.”

“And, uh.” Anya hesitates. Finally, an opportunity. “ _How_  long have you known him?”

Rose’s reply is so quiet she thinks she might have made it up. “Feels like forever.”

“Hey, you. English patient,” she adds out loud and leans in to pat his cheek lightly. Almost instantly, Chucks blinks and gives her a very woozy smile. She ruffles his slightly damp fringe. “Still with us?”

There’s a note to her tone that makes Anya feel like an intruder. Again.  _Goddamnit_.

“Where would I go ... Ipswich?” he slurs, still smiling and attempting to focus his eyes on her. Hair tussled like that, he really does look like a little boy. Rose’s expression is pinched when she smiles back, tightly.

“It was  _much_  funnier when I said that,” she tells him quietly.

“Well.” He sighs, and Anya’s not sure if that was all he had to say or he wanted to add something more but drifted off in the meantime.

Rose gives his forehead a light peck (she might be checking his temperature for all Anya knows but still, the gesture is uncomfortably intimate). He hums in response and attempts to pull her closer, arms sneaking weakly around her waist.

“Don’t go away,” he suggests vaguely into the fabric of her jumper.

“Don’t be sick,” she counters, hugging him back before she pulls away, reluctantly.

He smiles again in this hazy slowed-down manner that seems to take up an awful lot of his energy, “Oh, but  _Rose_ ,” he mumbles, “now  _you_  get to play the doctor.”

...

The sun is ironically bright and warm next morning and Anya finds herself wandering aimlessly through the secluded area of observation surrounding the crashed spaceship. She tries not to feel wistful at the sight of a very sleepy and very disgruntled Jake Simmonds arguing with Quentin Graves that pouring out his coffee onto the mechanism they’re investigating would  _definitely_  show whether it’s waterproof or not.

Oh, a life like that.

“Anya Vincent!” chirps a brisk voice behind her. As she turns, she’s surprised to find Chucks approaching her –– step springy, hands tucked into the pockets of a pinstriped blue suit and a smug smile plastered to his face. There’s a pink scarf tied neatly around his neck and he appears to be a few inches taller than she’s thought he would be. But maybe it’s just the hair. God, it must take an awful lot of gel for it to stick up that way.

Rose is walking beside him, all blonde hair and a pink zippy jacket, trying and failing to suppress a grin. 

“Hello,” she singsongs, a mad glint in her eyes. 

In fact, they both look awfully smug and cheerful, especially compared with the crippling worry and drug-inspired haze of last evening –– as though they have done something very exciting and very forbidden and were very pleased about it. Was he not high on meds and barely-conscious no more than twelve hours earlier, she would have no doubts as to  _what_  they’ve been doing.

“Nice scarf,” she scoffs as a mean of saying hello. “Suits you.”

He misses the sarcasm completely, or maybe purposefully makes it look like he does.

“Thank you!” he exclaims. “The  _lovely_  mother of Rose here has knitted it for me, apparently thinking it would be a good joke. Well, the joke’s on her, because I do look quite fetching in this particular shade. Lovely morning, isn’t it? Just when you think you finally get a sprinkle of winter, the weather goes hulabaloo, and here we are. Spring! I love Earth. There’s not a single thing that makes the slightest sense on this planet. Anyway, thanks for watching over me yesterday. And by the way –– Vincent.  _Vincent_ ,” he smacks his lips and scrunches up his face, as though trying to  _taste_  her name. “Vincent doesn’t sound very American, does it? Still, it has a nice, although unavoidably pretentious, ring to it. Vincent. You know, Rose, we should go see Van Gogh. I think you would like the sunflowers.”

Rose mutters something that sounds suspiciously like, “Ah, yes, why not get banished from another place.”

“There’s an exhibition going on currently, I think,” Anya points out, smiling in spite of herself. When they both look equally clueless, she elaborates, “ _Van Gogh_  exhibition.  God, you have a short attention span. And no need to thank me. You were actually pretty fun to watch.”

“Oh, I  _betcha_  was,” he says, mimicking her accent and turning to face Rose. He leans in closer to her, “Watcha say,  _doll_ , we hit the road today and pop ol’ Vince a visit? Hyped much?”

Rose stares at him. “And to think  _you_  teased  _me_  for my Scottish,” she shudders in horror. “My God, this was like a very badly done parody of Jack Harkness. After a few shots. Pretending to be Tom Cruise.” 

For some reason, he looks indignant. He is about to retort something but his momentum is cut by a loud voice coming from nearby the ship.

“Oi! Doctor! Rose! C’mere for a moment.” 

Jake gestures at them beckoningly, clearly agitated. “There’s a spill!”

Anya wonders briefly is he’s still refering to the coffee he was quarreling about with Quentin.

“Ha!” says the Doctor happily, “A spill. A spill sounds disastrous.  _Brilliant_. I told you they’ll muck it all up while I’m gone. Off we go, Rose Tyler, the Vincents must wait.”

Shooting Anya a wink, he grabs Rose’s hand and runs off in Jake’s direction, trailing her behind like a pair of kids in kindergarten. She can hear Rose’s high-pitched laughter.

For a moment, she stands numbly, looking in their direction. She had many ideas concerning how Rose Tyler’s life might currently look like while she drove all the way to this shabby corner of Brooklyn, where the mighty Torchwood’s operation squardon settled in order to investigate something “they did not want the U.N.I.T. to poke with their grubby little fingers”. 

Well, so much for the stable mother of four children. 

“Morning,” says a voice by her ear. “Fancy a cuppa?”

Quentin Graves is holding out a Starbucks, clad in a yellow parka and smirking. Sun is glinting off his glasses.

“Tell me, Graves, because I think might have just been defeated,” she sighs, accepting the beverage. “Who the  _hell_  is this Doctor person?”

To her surprise, he snorts. “What do you expect, an  _answer_? The Doctor’s the Doctor.”

She frowns, growing frustrated. “Okay, and he’s her what? Boyfriend? Husband? Long-lost lover? The Doctor, what does that even mean? Doctor of what?”

Quentin winces, but possibly it’s just because his coffee’s still too hot to drink.

“He’s her ...” he trails off. Shakes his head. “He’s ... No, that’s not it. It’s not about who he is to her, or she to him. But what they are together is quite interesting, I guess.”

“Well,  _what_  are they?” 

In the distance ahead of them, a rather dramatic scene is taking place. The Doctor has leaned across the fence and licked the wall of the crashed spaceship, much to Rose’s dismay. Now a rather cross Jake Simmonds is whining at the pink-scarfed man’s dogged attempts to lick a very determinedly resisting Rose Tyler in turn.

The mist is rising in the pink-ish morning light and a military helicopter flies by.

“Bloody  _terrifying_. Insane. Possibly heading towards autodestruction,” Quentin quips in reply, and she can’t tell whether he’s being serious or not. “Here’s the thing, though. Once you’ve seen them together, you sort of realise it can’t be any other way. More than that. S’long as they are, it’s good, the world’s not gonna fall apart,” he smiles dryly at her raised eyebrows. “They’re like a barometer for Apocalypse, really.”

“Oh,  _reassuring_ , that,” she sneers.

“You have no idea,” he shakes his head again and laughs. “I’m not kidding. It’s actually one of the most optimistic things I have ever said.”

A gleeful, if rather strangled, sound of triumph rings out, announcing that the Doctor’s tongue has fought its way to Rose Tyler’s neck at last. Jake kicks the alien wreck in frustration.

“Optimistic,” Anya repeats. Dubiously.

“Yeah." He takes a sip of coffe. “You try to split them up and see what happens.  _Nah_ , the world is safe and sound.”


End file.
